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Why Was There Just A Twitter War Over Van Gogh And Realism?

Way back on August 9, “Margarita” tweeted side-by-side images of van Gogh’s Café Terrace at Night and a rendition of the same scene in Arles by contemporary painter Haixia Liu (not to be confused with Thomas Kinkade); she appended the message “Should expose how overrated Van Gogh is.” It took until this past weekend, but the Twitterverse did notice, and it … reacted. – ARTnews

Atlanta Opera, Pushed By COVID, Moves To New Business Model For Fall 2020

“‘This pandemic has devastated so many lives and businesses,’ [general director Tomer] Zvulun said. ‘But it has also been a major catalyst in accelerating our shift to a business model that we have been discussing for years: creating a company of players, performing in nontraditional spaces,” — for this fall, that means alternating performances of Pagliacci and The Kaiser of Atlantis in an open-sided circus tent — “and developing our video and streaming capabilities.'” – ArtsATL

Why Algorithms Are Problematic In Education

“The global pandemic made it difficult to sit exams safely, so a solution needed to be devised. By looking at a combination of teacher’s predictions, past individual performance, and past school performance, grades were generated for every high school student in the UK. But as soon as the grades started to come in, thousands of students and teachers were shocked to see bright students getting poor grades. How it could it be that otherwise diligent and intelligent students from poor backgrounds were getting results which were demolishing ambitions?” – 3 Quarks Daily

Why Are Magazine Artciles Fact-Checked But Books Aren’t?

Most nonfiction books are not fact checked; if they are, it is at the author’s expense. Publishers have said for years that it would be cost-prohibitive for them to provide fact checking for every nonfiction book; they tend to speak publicly about a book’s facts only if a book includes errors that lead to a public scandal and threaten their bottom line. Recent controversies over books containing factual errors by Jill Abramson, Naomi Wolf, and, further back, James Frey, come to mind. – Esquire

Inside The Brains Of Jazz Improvisers

“How do singers such as Betty Carter take command of the present moment, seemingly bending reality to their will? While more romantic notions of creativity might point to Carter, and others like her, being ‘touched by the spirit’, there are less lofty explanations related to the physical dimension of making music with the human body, as well as the singer’s skilful musical interplay with the other musicians and the audience. There are also complex cognitive and psychological processes that drive the ‘real-time’ spontaneous creation of music.” – Psyche

The Future Of Our Lives Indoors

“Multiply your age by 0.9. If you’re forty, you’ve spent thirty-six of your years indoors. About a third of that is time spent sleeping, but still. Most humans who live in the United States and Europe spend more time indoors than some species of whale spend underwater. It may be that the minutes you spent walking to and from the subway on a Tuesday in January tallied up to fewer minutes than a whale spent on the surface, filling its lungs, that same day.” – The New Yorker

Here’s What It’s Like To Visit The Newly Reopened Met Museum

The new rules were evident inside the Met, where staff have installed an elaborate routing system designed to shuffle visitors from room to room without much crossover. Entrance into the Egyptian Wing, for example, brings attendees on a counterclockwise tour of the galleries. This makes for a more linear experience than usual, when meandering through different sections was a possibility. – Artnet